The cathedral is currently celebrating its 850th anniversary (construction started in 1163 and was completed in the mid-1240s) and to mark that momentous occasion, its nine new bells will be rung for the first time on Saturday, March 23, just in time for Easter.
It had been obvious for a long time that the old bells were out of tune, not only with each other, and with the great Emmanuel bell, which was cast in 1681. So at a cost of €2 million, raised from private donations, eight new bells to replace the five old ones were made at a foundry in Villedieu-les-Poeles in Normandy, and a ninth bell, called the Marie bell, was cast in the Netherlands. Recently, all the new bells were brought to the cathedral and put on display. Each bell is named after a saint or a prominent Catholic figure and when they ring out for the first time towards the end of March, it will surely be a joyous occasion not only for the faithful of Paris but for the innumerable visitors to the city.
And if you're fortunate enough to be in Paris to hear the new bells, it's well worthwhile making the short journey from the island that Notre Dame is located on, across the small bridge to the neighbouring Ile St Louis. The latter is an absolute gem, with its few well-preserved streets and
quayside walks that will remind you of a long vanished upper class Paris. If you cross from Notre Dame to the "mainland", don't miss the fabled bookshop of Shakespeare and Co.
Meanwhile, the Académie Française pursues its endless quest to keep French pure. The academy, with its curious customs and outfits, has been the guardian of French cultural purity for the past 378
years and over the past three decades, has been fighting a not always successful battle to translate the
legion of words about Information Technology into French equivalents. However, while the academy may have moral authority behind it, the institution doesn't have any legal powers to enforce
its rulings on the French language.
Some of its translations have become more or less accepted as standard in France, like courriel for email and logiciel for software. Its latest attempt is to persuade people in France to use the word mot-dièse for hashtag. Dièse means "sharp", so "sharp word" in translation!
Despite all these sometimes unsuccessful attempts to keep French in its pristine form, the uphill struggle continues. Just the other day, I got an email flyer from France which urged me to believe that "Happy Hours, c'est maintenant". Enough to make the elders of the academy splutter!
But the French have an addiction to bureaucratic rules and edicts. One of the most ridiculous ones, as applied to Paris, was only officially abolished the other day, despite having been ignored for decades. On November 7, 1800, it was declared that women in Paris couldn't wear trousers without a
permit. There were certain exceptions, such as for horse riding or riding a bicycle. Now the edict has been declared unconstitutional, but of course, it's been simply ignored for six decades and more. No sooner had this archaic edict been done away than two more came along.
The French government has decreed that as from July of this year, all shops and offices in France will have to turn off their lights at night, in order to save creating some 760 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It seems fair enough to keep offices in the dark at night, if no-one is present, but what
about shops, especially all the shops in fashionable parts of cities like Paris, where tourists love to window shop as they browse? Another new edict that's due to be introduced will see children be confined to school when they do their homework. The reasoning behind this is that children
from better off homes, where the parents are well educated, get all kinds of benefits from doing their homework at home compared to children from poor backgrounds. It all reminds me of what a one time Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, the late Dr Garret FitzGerald, said once about a
proposed new law: "In theory, it works fine, but the question is, will it work in practice?"
No wonder the French continue to be so dismissive about their president,Françoise Hollande. One of his nicknames in France is Monsieur Flanby. In case you're wondering, Flanby is a packaged dessert
produced by Nestlé: it's a brand of big wobbly caramel cream. Recently, Frederick Forsyth was even more damning of the French president, whom he described in the Daily Express as having less talent than his Jack Russell terrier. He explained that he meant the dimmer of his two dogs.
I wonder what the French will make of the Irish president when he visits France later this month. Michael D. Higgins may be small in stature, but he has a big humanitarian heart. During the past 30 years, he has been very outspoken on many issues, but the protocol surrounding the Irish presidency means that his scope for making comments on controversial issues is now very limited. A friend of mine who once studied at the university in Galway well remembers Michael D as a lecturer in political science and sociology there. His lectures were so electrifying that the students all made sure to be present for his lectures at 9am on Mondays, they were so unmissable, quite an achievement and not done for too many uni lecturers!
Still, it's not much better here in Ireland, where daft decisions continue to be made. One recent decision concerns the building of 2,300 wind turbines in the midlands of Ireland, which have the least amount of wind of any part of the country. In Britain, many people are turning against the monstrosities of wind turbines that now blight many landscapes there. But Britain still needs all the green energy it can get, so it has signed a deal so that all these extra wind turbines can pepper the landscapes across the midlands of Ireland, with the power generated, on the days that the wind blows, flowing into the UK grid.
Ireland is so depressing these days; all the talk is of cutting costs and of bringing in ever more ludicrous red tape to tie up even more aspects of people's lives. No-one seems to have anything creative or original to say!
Once, many people in Ireland had a rather loose relationship with the law; if they didn't like a particular law, they simply ignored it, an attitude that was a hangover from colonial days. In certain cases, the introduction and application of new laws has been long overdue and very welcome, as with the much tighter controls on driving, including drink driving, but these days, the Irish penchant for petty bureaucracy is getting every bit as bad as France.
Just this week, I heard from a friend of mine who moved to Melbourne, Australia, about three years ago. He had a good job in the media industry here in Ireland but when he and his wife had their first
child, a daughter, they decided that Ireland was no fit place in which to bring up a young child, so they packed up everything and moved to Melbourne. Despite the fact that it's one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live, they've been doing well, like the countless other
Irish people who've emigrated since the great economic crash began nearly six years ago. Every
week, some 2,000 Irish people, mostly younger people that the country can least afford to lose, are quitting Ireland in favour of places like Australia and Canada, where the wave of negativity that is washing over Ireland, simply doesn't exist.
That 2,000 figure, incidentally, doesn't include all the people from other countries who
came to work in Ireland during the boom, some of whom are now returning home. The days when Irish newspapers ran regular supplements in Polish are long gone, as Poland continues an economic miracle that's long vanished from this part of the world.
In contrast, it was so moving to hear the Desert Island Discs programme on Radio 4 with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader. She was incredibly moving, uplifting and inspirational. We need someone of her moral authority and positive determination here in Ireland and many other European countries are the same. In Britain, for instance, all that the Tories seem able to do,apart from inflicting yet more harsh measures on the poorest and most deserving in society, is faction fight among themselves on such issues as continued EU membership and gay weddings.
So here's to one rare and truly inspiring international figure and to the new bells of Notre Dame!